


Faces in the firelight

by idontaveone



Category: Captain America: The First Avenger - Fandom, Catpain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky was one of many, Dark, First Person Narration, Gen, Gore, Not much plot, POV Original Character, War sucks, original characters get a lot of screen time, war is not an action film
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2018-04-01 02:03:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4001710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idontaveone/pseuds/idontaveone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is not a love story. This is a war story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faces in the firelight

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Long Winter](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1799623) by [dropdeaddream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dropdeaddream/pseuds/dropdeaddream), [WhatAreFears](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatAreFears/pseuds/WhatAreFears). 



> This is my first posting anywhere ever. I decided to write anything at all after I've read the masterpiece that is "A Long Winter". I also loved it's take on Bucky as a young man wronged by history like so many others more than as Captain America's genetically modified sidekick.
> 
> Enjoy :)

Eli Kipling was a mine sweeper. He was tall, with long face, intensively blue eyes and an impressive mop of black hair on top of his head. We called him Kip and he didn't mind, he didn't really give a shit because every each day his job was to not get blown away while doing everything to get blown away. We would all halt so he and bunch of others like him could crawl towards an innocently looking piece of dirt and tinkle with it for a while, during which the wind in the sky and the breath in our lungs froze completely, and produce an inconspicuous piece of metal junk that could blow a man into the sky if not for Kip's and his mine sweeper buddies' deft hands. We liked Kip. Kip didn't mind. He was the most laid back, uninterested guy I've met. Even his other mine sweeping pals held him as a pinnacle of disinterest and calm. Of course there were times when even Kip seemed affected by the reality around us. One such time was when we entered a mind field after a sweep and one of the men, a young, blond kid called Atkins, barked something suddenly and went up into the skies along with a big portion of dirt form the field. Things like that happened all the time. It was not Kip's fault. That was what our Sergeant told him over and over again, with a hand squeezing Kip's shoulder, as the poor guy kept looking blankly ahead.

The Sergeant was a big eyed, ravishingly handsome kid, the kind of young, tragic beauty that makes people ponder the loss and waste of the war in a way a guy like me or Atkins or Kip does not. His face, pretty as a dame's, had quickly earned him a nickname “Betty”, which was close to whatever he said to call him, and “Sergeant Betty” was dumb enough to make him smile and stick.

Betty was a sharpshooter and had a growing reputation for his sharp eyes, and that probably had helped him spot Kip's anguish over the exploded Atkins, because Kip didn't really look different from how he'd always stared ahead with seemingly little attention for anything.

So there they were, the Sarge leaning over Kip, squeezing his shoulder and looking at him with huge, gray eyes and talking with an urging tone in his lazy Brooklyn drawl, and Kip, stiff and somehow not present, his small blue eyes looking ahead, his face slack but for the twist of his thin mouth each time Betty said “It wasn't your fault, pal. It wasn't your fault. Whacha lookin' at. It wasn't your fault.”

When Kip finally looked at the Sarge, it was only to say:

“It was my patch.”

Betty wouldn't let go then but he did understand that he was not going to win this, that Kip needed to pay somehow even if it wasn't his fault. It was strange to look at them in the bizarre sparring match, one trained to deal death, the other to prevent it. Kip would shoulder Atkin's death, and try everything not to let it repeat, but he had to know that in the big scheme of things, Betty's side still won by a thousand landslides. And it wasn't Betty's fault.

No one would have a hand on Betty's shoulder when he leaned over Penrose's cooling body, and that wasn't his fault either.

\--- 

Stevenson was a tough motherfucker and a frank, practical guy. He was taller than Kip and stringy and handsome, with dark brown eyes and sculptured profile. His skin was the delicate color of milk coffee, and his hair was dark and curly. His grandmother came from the Romani people. He never took any shit from nobody, so when he got some shit from the recruitment office concerning his origins and his looks, he didn't take it at all. He got in the 107th and soon no one wanted to give him shit anymore.

Stevenson was a funny guy. He didn't like to talk too much and also didn't like anyone too much except for Kip, whom he'd somehow chosen for his companion. Kip didn't mind of course. Stevenson also tolerated Betty, maybe even respected him, but that's all. He hated Dugan cause Dugan talked a lot and had been one of the goons trying to give Stevenson shit at the start.

There was a curious thing about Stevenson. Stevenson hated killing people. Hated it so badly that he would always get a dead, wide-eyed look on his face and his voice would shake whenever he had to shoot at the enemy. It was weird considering that he had volunteered and seemed like one of the most enduring guys in the division. He liked to clean his rifle, took care of it as if it were his own creation. He just didn't like shooting it.

Stevenson looked like a guy who was made for war, if it didn't have shooting people dead as the first requirement.

 ---

We'd been chasing after and running away from the front in Italy for a month.

The skies had elected that time to open the floodgates and cleanse us with heavy rain. The ritual left us threading, sitting and sleeping in dense, smelly mud of the field. Mud was everywhere, in our faces, our boots and our asses. We were permanently wet from head to toe, the skin of our feet dissolving inside the boots. The rain slowed the battle down, as everyone at each side was more occupied with trying not to dissolve along with their feet. The German artillery seemed to be able to endure more even if it's aim got a little worse, and the shells kept coming around us along with the water.

One of the quieter moments, at dawn, we sat in the trench, shaking and pretending we weren't. The bombardment had lessened a little and there came the long hours of grim, wet boredom. I remember it was Kip who started the conversation, but I know it was Podolsky who did. He turned to Penrose with a slightly feral grin on his mud splotched face. “How wuddya not wanna die, kid?” I don't remember what Penrose said to that but I know that he hadn't wanted to die the way he did.

Some rainy time passed and it was Stevenson's turn. “Dunno.” he said and the overwhelming, humid weight of the mud all over ourselves was infinitely more bumming than the conversation we'd been having in hushed voices and detached tones. “Bein' blown up would be fucked up, I suppose. Or gettin' decapitated.” he made a face and dragged his dirty fingers across his dirty throat. We laughed, raggedly, weakly in the dark. “You, Hoskins?”

I shrugged noncommittally as if I could not care less and took a moment to answer as though I'd never thought about this. None of this was true, and everybody knew, because they'd done the same. But we all pretended to be cool, to be tough. We all knew we were scared shitless and had imagined all the ways to die and how it would feel over and over again, but we all acted as if death and dirt and screams and bombs were normal, “because it's a war so whadda want?”. We all wanted to cry and curl around ourselves each time a shell exploded a little too close, but didn't. Not yet anyway, we'd been there for too short a time. It was a silent pact and even if we'd all broken it many many times, we would still remember that Betty had broken it only once. We would only recall that one time Sergeant Betty cried over a cooling half-a-corpse.

“A boobie trap.” I said in the end, sounding admirably cool about it even though the day before I'd spent the whole march across a field pondering the unknown sensation of your limbs suddenly flying independently from your body. The others nodded and grunted, and I turned to Betty, whose huge eyes glistered even bigger in his muddy face.

“Sarge?”

Penrose was still a whole beside him, so Betty played his part perfectly, his voice flat and disinterested, adding just enough cocky bravado to assure his men that he was unfazed and even a little amused, although we all knew he was shitting himself just as much as any other poor bastard caught in that foxhole. “Decapitation by a boobie trap, that sounds real bad. Real fuckin' bad.” he flashed us a killer grin.

Betty didn't get decapitated and didn't get blown up. He got minced inside-out in a POW camp, and then rescued, and then let himself drop several miles down without a parachute. He died quite a hero but I guess it didn't really make up for ending as a human pulp scattered all over some windy ravine in Italy.

“Yeah, real bad, Sarge.” someone said smilingly. “Guess it sounds real bad.”

\---

Two days later Podolsky got blown out of existence along with two guys from another regiment. They were chatting on the slope behind the trench, smoking and cackling in the young and vulgar manner and then there was a deafening noise and they were no more. Nothing left. The explosion was too damn loud for Podolsky and his two pals. They were engulfed in the sound and disappeared. And Podolsky never got to see Poland, though no one really believed he'd have liked it anyway. Nobody likes broken things.

“You should see it, fucking circus trick!” Stevenson would later report “One moment that fucker's laughing with that ugly puss of his and the next puff! Nothing, nada. Fucking magician, I tell ya.”

 ---

We were all seated around a small fire, its jerky light extracting us from the darkness, its cracking sound failing to drown the blunt, self-iterating thuds of the distant explosions at the horizon. The sky hung enormous and low above us, just the shade lighter than everything else, outlining the six of us around the small fire. I can still see it like I'm there, the black-green sky together with the modest fire bringing back to life people long gone, not all of them even buried in the ground.

Stevenson was polishing his rifle, because he was in one of his moods, his long-fingered hands steady, his smooth face serene.

“Bullshit!” he would exclaim in moments like that, his voice deep, his eyes pale and glistering in the firelight, his hands never stopping their work. “Bullshit” he'd repeat. He'd do it several times, no matter if any of us said anything or not. We didn't have to ask what he was talking about. Between the cracking fire and the blunt thuds of bombs behind the horizon Stevenson's input didn't need explaining at all.

Penrose and his unfortunate glasses reflected the orange light fluttering like a moth on a window pane, and he was hunching over himself, trying to get closer to the fire. It didn't really give out much heat. I know Penrose didn't sniffle with his nose, but I remember that he did, because I remember him with his thin wrists, his wheezing breath and his unfortunate round glasses that I'm not sure he wore.

He was fiddling with a compass, his eyes cast down, invisible behind the circular glint of his glasses. He snorted and pointed to the West, which he didn't need doing, because the West was exactly where we were and we were exactly at the West.

“All quiet at the western front.” he said with an amused, proud grin, as if this lame literary reference was the best joke a man had made. He pointed at the front, that was more to the North and repeated, smiling: “All quiet at the _Italian_ front. How many till it's not gonna be quiet?”

“Bullshit!” Stevenson spat out non-aggressively.

Gabe Jones rose from where he was lying on his back beside Betty, adding a seventh silhouette to the circle. Gabe was in the "Buffalo" 92nd, oart of which happened to be getting ripped to pieces in the same place with our 107th, and after several days of getting ripped to pieces by the Germans and ripping them back, the question of segregation stopped being that fucking important. One touch of humanity that we actually gained instead of losing.

“Petey, get your head around something else, buddy.” Gabe said, the bombing at the horizon sounding along with his quiet voice. This was one of those many occasions when we sat on our asses, momentarily safe and alive, and he wanted to relish in that. Betty spat out whatever he was chewing on and looked at Penrose, his eyes sharp and enormous in the flickering light.

“But look how fitting!” Penrose looked at Gabe with an urgency an academic could only direct at another one. “Listen how fitting!” he waved his thin wristed hand in the general direction of the echoing explosions. To the men they were just tearing into pieces as we sat around the fire. To the shells devastating women and children and men and dogs alike. Their muffled thumping against our delicate cracking and hissing.

“Bullshit!” Stevenson interjected, because he hadn't read the damn book just like me and Kipp and Dugan and Podolsky had not either.

“Like fuck it's fittin'” sounded Betty's lazy drawl, because Betty wasn't an academic at all, but he'd read everything, so of course he'd read the damn book. “Ain't nobody want to listen to that crap, Petey.” he dragged on the cigarette hanging between his pouty lips.

Dugan grunted with that familiar fondness he had for Betty. I know Penrose didn't snivel but I remember he did.

“It ain't crap!” he said, his voice breathy, cracking. “Tomorrow it can be us, and what difference for _them_?” his voice got intense, his eyes glistering behind the glasses. I remember we all rolled our eyes, I know I did.

“Bullshit!” Stevenson butted in and this time it sounded like an actual conversation.

“Shut up, Petey.” Betty mumbled around the cigarette, because Betty was a swell guy but he was also an asshole. And he was right, nobody wanted to listen to Penrose's bullshit that night. “Think about your fuckin' girlfriend or somethin'.”

I don't know what Penrose did then, but I remember he'd shut up. I remember his eyes cast down, eyelashes shadowing his sunken cheeks, so maybe he didn't really have the glasses.

But Penrose's bullshit did make us feel a little low, and we all fell silent for a moment. Gabe lay back down on the grass to stare sightlessly at the heavy sea-green black of the sky with his arms under his head, Stevenson kept polishing his rifle, his face jumping in the flickering light. Betty leaned forward and threw the cigarette butt into the fire. I could bet that it landed exactly where he'd aimed it for. Penrose didn't look like he was thinking about his girl at all.

Between us the fire cracked and hissed and swirled and behind us the bombs killed faceless men, with discrete thuds.

“Say, Sarge,” Podolsky said after being completely lifeless since we'd sat by the fire. Betty raised his eyes at him, and I cannot help but only ever remember them wet evermore. “D'ya have a girl to come home to?” it was as bullshit a question as any about “home” but as good one as any to distort the gentle cacophony of the moment.

Betty smiled, his face mellowing, his (wet) eyes creasing at the corners. It was a sweet smile and not one of us doubted he did have a girl back home. “Sure thing.” he said, straightening.

“Yeah, how's she like?” Stevenson asked, finally out of his mood, his face slack, his hands resting at his tights, the rifle waiting at his side. Kip didn't look interested at all.

Betty's smile grew nostalgic

“Blonde.” he said softly, and he turned his short, perfectly chiseled profile to us, looking somewhere at the horizon, facing away from the front, seeing something we could not. His face was stolen by a warm, delicate yearning, his dark hair wavy on the gentle nighttime wind, the sea-green darkness of the sky encasing him and he kind of looked like a painting.

I remember looking at him, just looking, and feeling sadness creeping its way slowly up my chest. The heavy, eerily lit sky, the cracking, dancing light of the fire, the ragged rhythm of the front, it all felt disjointed, undone and seemed to somehow come together only where Betty's profile cut into the sky, with hooded eyes and a little quirk of his lips. A soft, melancholic beauty that made you think of loss and waste and sacrifice in a way a face like Penrose's or Kipp's or mine did not.

I don't know if we did but I remember we all sat transfixed, looking at Betty as he looked way beyond the horizon, beyond Naples, across the damned Atlantic Ocean and saw something that wasn't there, a vision that existed only for his eyes.

“You know,” Penrose said after a while “I half expected you to get angry, cause the damned book's about Germans!”

\---

Two days later, Stevenson was dead.

We were marching down a country road, dust in our eyes, noses and mouths and sun making the gear seem thousands times heavier, and Stevenson let out a soft, slightly surprised sigh, stumbled and fell to the ground, already dead.

There was a momentary commotion, the column loosing its continuity, as men who marched ahead of Stevenson turned to see, those behind him stopped in their tracks, and Eli “Kip” Kipling who was walking with him froze in place, looking at Stevenson with a confused and impatient expression on his face.

Then within seconds, there was another shot and a young buck just beside the staff sergeant yelped and tumbled to the ground.

“Sniper!” Sergeant Betty roared close to me “Take cover!!” and I still remember the surreal sight of a column of men folding upon itself and scattering in panicky unison, as we all tumbled down on our own accord and crawled off the road to flatten ourselves in the ditches on the sides. Stevenson, the young buck and Walt Willis were the only ones still on the road.

I lay close to Kip on my left and Betty on my right side, and Stevenson's curly head a feet above me, the rest of his long body splayed rather haphazardly, out-of character for Stevenson. The sniper kept us pinned with his everywhere-and-nowhere presence. There was a rapid “zip!” in the air and Johnson, the twenty year old guy who liked to suddenly appear beside you and yelp in your ear, yelped on the other side of the road as a bullet zapped through his throat.

“Stay fuckin' down!!” an NCO cried from the other side. The opposite ditch was a much more vulnerable position and the guys in there could not move an inch without alarming the invisible fucker and his zip-zapping slugs.

After that there came silence, we lied still, hugging the sandy ground beneath us, the air vibrating with heat and fear. I remember squeezing my eyes tight because I thought they would pop out of my head from apprehension, my whole body tingling as I expected the damned slug to hit it but could not know where exactly. Beside me, Betty was lying still as a stiff, his left eye squeezed shut, the right one put against the scope of his rifle. There was a long, bushy ridge some 400 yards from us. Betty was a sharpshooter too, and Betty too was waiting with patience that could only bring death in its wake. I know he was breathing but I remember he wasn't and a lazy trail of sweat running from underneath his helmet down the side of his stony  face was the only way to know he wasn't a picture.

Stevenson was dead.

There was another zip followed by a furious “Don't move!”

“We're fucking pinned, sir!” someone shouted from our side and the staff Sergeant in the other ditch sounded affronted when he shouted back that he fucking noticed that and stay the fuck down.

Minutes passed with the sun burning us into the ground and the sniper, invisible and elusive and filling the air with his presence. We couldn't stay like this and we had to stay like this. There was another “Don't move!!” and I heard someone's hushed voice going “Who's moving for crying out loud?” and another one, a sharp nervous, almost giggling: “Those idiots on the road, those dumb fuckers on the road.”

Another minute passed and we still couldn't move. I started to fear I would go crazy from the anticipation, from the motionlessness and the heat. If death is the lack of movement, we were all dead.

Kip on my left kept glancing over to where Stevenson was dead on the road. Kip's face still had the same expression of irritated confusion as it had when Stevenson had died. I wanted to put my hand on his shoulder. I wanted to comfort him. There was another zip! and I remained still.

“That sonuvabitch's dead.” Kip said on my left, his voice impatient and confused and irritated.

“That sonuvabitch's moving.” Betty muttered on my right, his voice patient and knowing and calm.

And then.

“I got him.”

But he didn't have him yet, he had to make sure, and moments later I saw him slowly take his helmet off with one hand, his eye never leaving the cross hair. Then, the rest of his body still motionless, he took the helmet in hand and lifted it in a swift movement.

“What the fuck are you doing??” I wanted to ask but didn't have time, because almost immediately there was a zip and Betty's helmet banged and I don't know it but I remember Betty firing simultaneously, one hand still in the air, gripping the banging helmet.

You'd think there was a long moment of silence when the inertia force kept us still and pressed to the burning ground, but it wasn't like that and seconds later few other guys waved their helmets the way Betty did. There was no zip, no bang, no yelp of pain. For a moment there was only the buzzing of the heat in the air. Then someone shouted “All clear” and the NCOs got us up. I scrambled up, my knees weak with relief, my heart swelling with mad gratitude towards Sergeant Betty, who got to his feet at my right, giving orders to our squadron, as the road started moving again, except for the two dead guys from the 4th, Johnson and Stevenson who were dead. It's impossible to convey the feelings I had for Betty in that moment. It's impossible to tell about the overwhelming waves of love and intoxicating gratitude that came onto me each time I looked at the Sergeant. I don't remember but I know many others shared those feelings, patting Betty on the shoulders and shoving him affectionately, murmuring their thankful relief disguised as admiration as they passed by. After the agonizing minutes (hours? Days?) of waiting for death, all the tension was converted into something else, just as powerful, and I'm sure even if I don't know that each of us who was not one of Stevenson's men on that road was momentarily, madly, hopelessly in love with Sergeant Betty.

For all that's worth, when he could shed his sniper skin and move again, Betty just looked exhausted.

I lost track of Kip on my left and found him standing over Stevenson's body, his brow furrowed in almost petulant confusion. The fleeting elation of the moment had gone and I wanted to scream and wail for Kip. I could do nothing for Stevenson anymore.

Stevenson was very dead at our feet and he didn't look peaceful and he didn't look anguished, he didn't look anything but dead. His eyes were half-closed, his mouth too so the upper teeth were showing and there was a trail of dry blood running across his forehead, a dark-brown clog plastering the side of his face to the ground.

Kip looked very much alive and that was one of the most horrible sights I remember from the war.

There was no time, we had to get moving. Four guys were assigned a recon mission in the damned bushes. Four other guys, including me, were to dig six-two holes for the four guys who didn't have to do anything anymore. The Sergeants collected the dog tags from their former soldiers. Betty stooped to delicately extract the frail chain from around Stevenson's neck and then walked over to Kip and handed him the tags, his face ashen but otherwise unmoving. I know and I remember that Kip didn't cry because the only time I really remember such a thing was Betty crying over Penrose's body, and it hadn't happen yet. For then Betty was a precious fucking little thing, an indomitable death dealing savor of us all, and Penrose was alive and frowning at his unfortunately bent glasses. For then, it was Stevenson who was dead and it was Eli Kipling who wasn't crying. It was me who wasn't wailing for Eli Kipling and it was me, Martin and two other men digging up the graves.

Digging a grave at the side of a country road in the peak of an Italian summer day is a deeply unpleasant activity and I kept waiting for a sulky, low “Bullshit!” to sound among us but then I remembered that Stevenson was dead and the grave I was suffering over was where his heavy-lidded eyes and bared upper teeth would be buried.

We'd helped Stevenson disappear beneath the Italian earth, the whole squadron standing nearby, many pairs of hooded eyes staring at me and Martin shoveling up Stevenson's new dwelling. I heard laughs and giggles and swearing, and didn't feel outraged. Close by, Penrose looked every ounce as young as he was, shoulders hunched and frail with the grotesque excuse of a mustache. He kept nibbling on something with his hands.

“Fuck!” Martin swore beside me, wiping his forehead with his hand. “Shit!”

Kip stood nearby, very still in an oddly casual position. His long face was expressionless, the earlier confusion and irritation gone along with the last sight of Stevenson's curly, leaky head. He inclined down his head so that his cheeks looked hollow and his high cheekbones cut away from the dark holes where his small blue eyes should be. I know they were there, but I remember they weren't. His face was an eyeless composition of light and shade, and his body was frozen in a painfully casual pose.

Kip survived the war and went back home and married a fine girl and had two children and a nice little house. He worked as a mechanic and led a modest life. His friends told stories, somehow baffled how he'd sometimes blurt out “Bullshit!” during a conversation, completely unprompted and out of context. I met him once, we went for a beer. I remember his small blue eyes and the tiniest tremble of his long fingers, and I knew that if anyone has ever returned from that war, it damn sure wasn't Kip.

I threw the shovel away, panting in the sun, and caught the sight of Betty, whose big eyes kept wondering towards Kip, his face gaunt and tainted with motherly worry. I know his eyes weren't wet then, because it still wasn't time, because he didn't cry over Stevenson, even if he looked like he maybe wanted to cry over Kip.

The recon mission returned form the bushes with a body in a Nazi uniform, with a hole in the teeth and the back of the head. For a time everybody had abandoned the four graves and laughed and whistled and clapped and shoved Betty amiably. We were all kinds of proud and starstruck, and the four graves made us even more insistently jovial in our approval. Betty just winked and smiled his killer smile, even if his eyes still darted to Kip who smiled strangely, quietly at the dead sniper. I looked at the German with a hole in his head. He was a little older than Betty. Hair the color of hay. As handsome, square-jawed and Aryan as they come. As dead as Stevenson and his men. We didn't hate him anymore, we were in love with Betty.

“He was damned good.” I remember Betty saying, stood beside Kip who was as still as the Kraut.

“Damn right, he got four!” Dugan exclaimed and everybody cheered over the three graves, because they'd survived, because to kill a giant made Betty's feat even better. And it didn't really make any difference to Stevenson's men, our cheering and laughing, Stevenson and his men were dead.

“Five!” Betty said smiling crookedly and patting his helmet where it had a small hole just over the left eye.

Later, away from where we'd left Stevenson and his men and the German sniper, we would sit around a frail fire and Kip would give Betty a strange look and say something about walking corpses and ghosts, and we would all wait for an inevitable, sharp and decisive “Bullshit!” to cut him off but it never came because Stevenson was dead.

\---

Penrose's mother wrote to him a lot, but when she died of pneumonia she could not do it anymore. Sergeant Betty told him that it's alright cause at least she'd be spared the horror of getting her son's dog tags in a scented envelope, because Betty was a swell man but also an asshole. Penrose's beady, sad eyes became even beadier and sadder. Kip patted the kid on the shoulder and murmured something, I cannot remember what and I don't know what. Stevenson and Podolsky were already in the ground or in the air.

And then, some weeks after he'd lost his mother to pneumonia, Penrose lost half of himself to a bomb when we tried to get through across a dark field under heavy mortar fire from the Germans, and when me and young McIntosh went back for him after all went finally quiet, we found his belongings scattered around his upper half, some letters from his mother and a ripped comic book cover with Captain America smiling proudly with half a face burned off.

Me and McIntosh – not much older than Penrose, with coal black hair and pale blue eyes in an angry, pretty face – gathered Penrose and his things and took them back to the trench. We all gathered around the dead kid and Betty approached him, slowly, gingerly, as if he was afraid of him.

Many people died that night. Many of them we knew and even more we didn't know.

Alghough deprived of his guts and legs, Penrose looked quite good in his death. His delicate features had smoothed over and lost their ratty look. He'd lost his unfortunate glasses and his closed eyes were big and long-lashed. Even his hair looked golden and clean in the dim light. We all looked at him, from his newly beautified face to the bloody mess at the other end. Kip looked like he always did, face blank and eyes piercing, young McIntosh, himself left two days of life before an automatic rifle ripped several holes in his chest, looked angry and grim; Dugan took off his idiotic hat, but I think his mournful look was dedicated more to Betty than to Penrose. Penrose was dead. We still weren't.

We all stood in a tired, mute circle and looked at the dead kid of a dead mother. Betty took few slow, careful steps and knelt beside the corpse.

Alright, here's the thing. We all remembered that Betty had cried that night. That he'd done what we all had wanted to do, what we had all done but never so shamelessly. He was our Sergeant, he was tough, nerves of steel when shooting German snipers in the teeth. Supposed to stand unmoved for us, be our Captain America, more than him. And in that moment, we were all jealous of him for his shamelessness. But, thing is, I don't remember and I don't know if Betty really cried then, when he knelt, tired, dirty and hurt, over the half a body, among his tired, dirty, hurt men, with the chaotic music of the front filling the air.

His shoulders shook several times. That I remember. His eyes were huge and wet when he'd raised them at us. That I know. But did he cry?

Maybe he was coughing; his lungs had been somehow afflicted since that time we spent some days lying face-down in mud and pouring rain. Maybe his eyes teared up from the sudden lack of air in his lungs.

His shoulders shook when he was taking the dog tags off from Penrose's neck, not to be sent to his mother in a scented envelope. But his hand did not shake.

Two days later McIntosh was running to take cover behind a pile of rubble in a destroyed town and got cut down by an automatic rifle.

And three weeks later, after we'd been thrown up North, I got a shrapnel to my left knee and got sent back, and out of all my fellow men I only ever saw Kip again. I never even saw my left leg again.

Two days after I lost my leg and gained a ticket back home instead, the 107th got decimated and captured by the Germans at Azzaro. And they would meet and live and die in another story.

\----

We all sat around the fire. Penrose had put his comic book away, Stevenson finished working on his rifle and got into a quiet conversation with Kip. Dugan had dosed off, young McIntosh was nowhere to be found, Podolsky was whistling some mournful Polish tune, and Betty and Gabe sat up and smoked another cigarette. All our eyes got somehow fixated on the flickering fire. The bombing went on undisturbed on the front, people died undisturbed all across three Continents. I remember that we were still all there, solid and whole. We still had our guts and limbs, still had not learned to fly or disappear in a bloody mist, our foreheads and chests were smooth. We still had our moms and comic books and blond-haired sweethearts back home. Yet I know that our faces were flickering in the air, brought out from and thrown back into the darkness by the fading fire. Made of shade and light, quivering, shifting, unreal. And above us was the heavy, sea-green black of the sky. Before us only future, behind us – only past.

We were still all there.

 

 

-

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> English is not my first language and the story is unbetaed. I apollogise for all historical/linguistic inaccuracies.The sniper scene is a very liberal take on a true story I've read long time ago. I've always wanted Bucky to be in a story written by Vonnegut or O'Brien or maybe Heller. I wasn't really trying to "do" any of the writers but I was heavily inspired by them (cause I absolutely adore them) and wanted to write a Bucky story that they could maybe write in a Captain America AU ;) It's an experimental babble with a LOT of poetic licence taken, but I enjoyed writing it.
> 
>    
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
